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T.Hawk Laboratory

I'm gonna post and update the Hawk-specific section of my SSF4 to-do list, and I think it would be cool if you guys did the same. Hopefully we can get some better ideas of what to test and inspire each other to think up new things.

--any good deep meaties to option select and combo out of? cr. mk maybe?
--sweep looks very fast, does anything combo into it? jabs? meaty cr. mk?
--how safe is spire on block?
--any normals with good enough frame advantage to link a special from? dp looks fast enough that it might be possible
--dp follow up to spd? yep, recovers with plenty of time, lands very close on mp spd and 1 character length away on hp spd
--are any far non-jab normals cancelable?
--jab xx spire in footsies?
--jump attack and dive in one jump? yes, but jump jab only
--max range antiair spire? any range antiair ex spire?
--antiair low fierce?
--see which normals are fadc-able and super cancelable
--ex dive after ex dp on block? if whiff? on block yes, on whiff no
--which normals are safe on block, which punishable?
--who can punish dive? who can't?
--cr. mp link to cr. mp?
--post jab spd, can I time meaty dive to cross up?
--jump back jab antiair?
--check for overheads, including jump back instant overhead
--any command normals? yes, down-toward+jab
--any dash-cancelable normals?
--can jabs link?
--any good safe meaty normals?
--any good safe jump air attacks?
--can hawk dive serve as a safe jump?
--focus crumple combo u2? no
--juggle antiair spire into dp? u2? dive? normals? into dp yes, not into u2
--is ex dp invincible? longer startup?
--jump jab cancel into dive uses? jump jab dive/land spd mixup? air to air jab cancel dive to land first or cross up?
--how good is the hitbox on dive, can it beat antiairs?
--jump instant dive? no, have to wait until you're a little off the ground
--is dt+jab an overhead
--does he have a short jump?

i'll just add in... WHAT is the mixup if he gets a blocked jumpin and "thinks" his opponent will jump out of 360?...
gief has cr.lpx2 st.lk xx ex flat.

it doesnt seem that hawk has a good bnb from jab?? so that is something to look out for... if his mixup is dp... then hawk officially sucks... lol. j/k but his mixup needs to be found ASAP.

I've seen in match videos that T. Hawk can do cr. jab x3, st. jab, far st. strong, so he can combo off his jabs for days. He probably has something similar to the Gief mix up you outlined above, we would just have to determine whether Hawk has a long range special cancelable normal like Gief's st. short. That's one of the things UltraDavid will be looking for when the game drops, it's on his list.

I'll also be getting a lot of play time soon in the next few days, so I can do a lot of testing.

It looks to me like that ex-dash attack" i forget the name" puts them into a juggle state after it hits. Can you ultra 2 after this hits. I am assuming you can do his dragon punch attack or can you do another ex-dash attack. happens at about 2:20.

Also does he have short jump.

One other cool thing i saw is how the ex condor dive works as a cross up after a blocked ex dragon punch in another vid this could be very useful.

I think hes going to be all about ex attacks.

Also it looks like after his hp command grab the best way to get in for a mix up is condor dive.

I played with him all night the other night and had a huge write up of his normals / specials but I didnt save it. Im going to do it again today when I get home from work. His dp is a fucking joke though. And im almost 100% positive condor spire is perfectly safe, as it should be.

I played with him all night the other night and had a huge write up of his normals / specials but I didnt save it. Im going to do it again today when I get home from work. His dp is a fucking joke though. And im almost 100% positive condor spire is perfectly safe, as it should be.

How about the EX version what did you think of his EX DP? It seems like he'll be needing meter for his DP so I wonder if you can just dive in place or something to help kinda build that against your opponent or just normally kick there butts and build it that way.

His DP is utter trash. It has hardly any priority, and loses to a bunch of things :( His EX DP loses to ryu's EX DP. I swear it's almost like vega's ST. The follow up after the EX DP is not free if the DP part hits. You can only cancel it at a certain point and depending on where you hit the person in the air with the dp it may or may not hit. Although in the corner it seems to hit everyone regardless of where you anti-aired them from.

Spire is a pretty good move. I spam that to build meter, but I dont recall exactly how much it builds. But it's relatively safe to spam from a distance. Although up close it is not safe at all against grapplers. I could 360, super, or ultra thawk if he spires from up close (it was a t-hawk mirror). Maybe from a distance it's safe, or maybe you can back dash but I'm not completely sure. I just know that I was able to command grab after every spire. Against other characters though it's pretty awesome.

His jumps are super floaty. Almost like chun which is quite lame. So you can do the zangief crossup shit as well as gief can. So even though his jab throw leaves the guy right next to you theres not too many options i can think of since his x-up is so bad. Although against dj if you i believe jab spire right after you jab command throw him it'll cross him up. I dunno if it works on all characters though. I tried doing it on a bunch of people and it seemed to only work on DJ.

Those are my initial impressions after playing the game for a good eight hours yesterday

Ok I got some time in, but did not have access to training mode. It was win to stay so I did a lot of trial and error in most of the matches I could. And here are my impressions and possible answers, these will need to be confirmed in training b/c it was quite late and I had a few beers heh.

--any good deep meaties to option select and combo out of? cr. mk maybe?
I was throwing c.fierce meaty and it was working great for any non invuln reversal. The hitstun on it meaty seems long enough to link something after it but I couldn't get anything to connect.

--sweep looks very fast, does anything combo into it? jabs? meaty cr. mk?
I want to say I got jab to combo into sweep on counter hit. I could not get anything after the cr.forward, but I was mainly toying with the range for it in footsies.

--how safe is spire on block?
Spire is very safe on block if you do not use the hard version in their grill.. My whole initial gameplan on the ground was once I got the ranges down for spire I would just whiff it and go f.spd or punish the jump away with SRK. You can also of course buffer the 720 as well during it just like using the russians green hand. It also works as an antiair for jumps a distance in front of you, with more horizontal range than the SRK.

--dp follow up to spd? yep, recovers with plenty of time, lands very close on mp spd and 1 character length away on hp spd
Another option I was using after f.spd was condor dive. I could control the distance I landed at, right at their feet or just slightly back and would recover with plenty of time.

--are any far non-jab normals cancelable?
did not come across any, but not ruling it out

Had the most success with late dives or punishing whiffs with it. It is great for those people who FA backdash all the time. and yes it crosses up at the right height/distance!

--post jab spd, can I time meaty dive to cross up?

Oh yes! It was easier on certain fighters (boxer was who I was able to get it working on the most) you can really cross with dive when they are cornered as well.

--any good safe meaty normals?

These need more testing.

--is ex dp invincible? longer startup?

Yes it has invincibility, but not a ton. It will lose to other better EX DP on wake up (Ryu,Akuma and of course Seth) but that is not when to bust it out. The DP is a great anti air hands down. I see them jumping I go tomahawk and ka pow. Close nj. into an air attack, pow.

--can hawk dive serve as a safe jump?
Yes I believe so. I was using it to land just outside of AA range

Thats it from the list I can think of right now. Main thing that felt so good with Hawk was the simple punishing the running from the grabs. If they jump away thinking grab they eat a SRK to the grill plain and simple. I want to also have someone with training mode test the range of the grabs. I want to say they are all the same (jab/fierce) And I ended up using fierce the most bc after I would get right back to them with a SRK or whiffed dive just as they got up. A lot more to do of course and if I get more time I'll test what I can. Boxer and Honda look like tough match ups for Hawk. All may be subject to change!

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lp CS is safe if done from distance, not so if done from up close. fp CS seems on disadvantage even on hit if done from close.

--any normals with good enough frame advantage to link a special from? dp looks fast enough that it might be possible

s.mp, s.lp xx dp works if that's what you mean.

--dp follow up to spd? yep, recovers with plenty of time, lands very close on mp spd and 1 character length away on hp spd

hp dp lands you pretty close, just outside of sdp distance. lp dp lands pretty far.
lp sdp lands you right next to opponent. mp two dashes away, hp other side of the screen.

--are any far non-jab normals cancelable?

nothing other then cl.s.mp, cl.s.mk is cancellable

--jab xx spire in footsies?

maybe. jab does cancel to spire but I'm not sure what you have in mind.

--jump attack and dive in one jump? yes, but jump jab only

yes jab into dive works it even comboes even against Ryu

--max range antiair spire? any range antiair ex spire?

spire does work as antiair if you do it early.

--antiair low fierce?

couldn't try this

--see which normals are fadc-able and super cancelable

cl.s.mp, cl.s.mk only. fadc cancel doesn't combo.

--ex dive after ex dp on block? if whiff? on block yes, on whiff no

if ex dp wiffs you can't do ex dive. on block ex dive rarely hits. I was trying against Yuri.

--which normals are safe on block, which punishable?

his normals seem pretty safe on block to me.

--who can punish dive? who can't?

I think people who has long reach or can travel quickly can punish dive, like blank or balrog. also raging demon punishes.

--cr. mp link to cr. mp?

I don't think so. I was able to do s.mp, c.mp though.

--post jab spd, can I time meaty dive to cross up?

seems plausible...if you can cross up dive. I couldn't.

--jump back jab antiair?

I don't think so. j.lp has very short range.

--check for overheads, including jump back instant overhead

He doesn't have any. I tried a few jump back instant overhead but I don't he has a working one.

--any command normals? yes, down-toward+jab

yes only that and I wish he hadn't that.

--any dash-cancelable normals?

I don't know how to do this

--can jabs link?

yes lp up to 4 hits

--any good safe meaty normals?

no idea. I couldn't even do a meaty attack once. either his attacks are too fast or I suck at meaties.

--any good safe jump air attacks?

I think dive can be used as a safe jump. You can't tk-dive, dive requires certain height to come out but you can do it somewhat early and it falls pretty short and I think it can surprise an opponent waiting for block.

^^ so close mp is in then? i didnt see it the night i played but I never really tried to use it. It was good in ST as a panic button anti air. Same thing with cl.rh. For some reason the hitbox on that was really goofy and worked well. I hope its the same in this

Lp dp on wake up was getting stuffed for me. Again, for some reason, hawk has 0 range on his dp, except this time its horizontal. in st, he had shit range below his body so it was tough to stuff some pokes (guile low forward and ryu low forward for example)

I got a chance to try out T. Hawk today, he's extremely fun to play, way more so than Zangief. Here are some things I noticed, both good and bad. I highlighted #2 because I feel like it's the most important:

1) To answer UltraDavid's question, any jab xx Spire as a block string isn't great against good players, it's not that hard to react to and punish; EX Spire works a lot better here.

2) That being said, I got a lot of mileage out of LP/EX Condor Spire has a pressure/mix up tool anyway. I'm hesitant to call it a great move though, we'll have to see how it stands the test of time, but I still really like it. Your opponent's strongest escape option in this mix up is to backdash, seeing as it causes SPD and DP to whiff. A friend of mine suggested that the safest way to deal with backdashing is with a cr. jab/option select sweep, just like Ryu. I haven't had a lot of time to test this, but I'll be practicing it a lot.

3) His normal DPs are hilariously bad, probably amongst the worst in the game. Their horizontal range is piss poor, forget about scooping pokes off the floor like Sagat can. I was counter hit by jump ins, I was swept out of start up; hell, I was fucking thrown out of start up. It was just a mess. EX DP is a little better. It beats a lot of normal DPs too, which is pretty good. The juggle into EX Dive deals some hefty damage.

4) I was actually have a lot of success with using Spire as an anti-air, even normal Spire! It beats jumps pretty cleanly and juggles into EX DP. You have to time it early, but it's still good.

5) His pokes are godlike. My favourite poke by far is cr. forward. It looks like it recovers faster than Ryu's cr. forward, and it's just killer in footsies. St. fierce is a close second, seeing as it's damaging and fast. St. forward has excellent range and insane speed and st. strong has excellent range and high priority. His jabs feel slower than Gief's, but they're still good. St. roundhouse comes out quickly, has disgusting range and hits hard. However it whiffs on most crouching opponents and is pure focus bait.

6) Thrust Peak (d/f + LP) is secretly good. It actually looks way faster than his other jabs; I'd go as far as to say that it's his fastest normal. It allows for an easy buffer into 720 and you can cancel it into jab DP from a good distance away. It's just annoying to have it come out during jab strings when you don't want it to. Speaking of which, EX Spire and EX DP overlap a lot, which pissed me off and cost me games.

7) To answer UltraDavid's question, a properly spaced Hawk Dive has a fantastic hitbox. It straight counter hits everything, beating a lot of anti-airs including DPs. A very important thing I found was that the closer you are to hitting your opponent in the head, the more likely it is for you to beat anything they throw out. And I mean anything. I empty jumped on my friend's Sagat and he reacted with an anti-air Tiger Destruction. I figured what the hell, I might as well Hawk Dive and it traded. I was shocked, I've never seen that Ultra lose before. But if your opponent is spaced properly, it'll lose for free. Sim's b + RH beats it clean. As such I would condition my friend to expect it every time I jumped, so I whiffed a Hawk Dive in front of him and caught his b+RH with a 720.

8) Another thing worth figuring out is exactly how low to the ground you can perform a Hawk Dive.

Sorry for the long response, I hope this is useful for anyone. I won't be able to test any more after this until the official release.

I got a chance to try out T. Hawk today, he's extremely fun to play, way more so than Zangief. Here are some things I noticed, both good and bad. I highlighted #2 because I feel like it's the most important:

1) To answer UltraDavid's question, any jab xx Spire as a block string isn't great against good players, it's not that hard to react to and punish; EX Spire works a lot better here.

2) That being said, I got a lot of mileage out of LP/EX Condor Spire has a pressure/mix up tool anyway. I'm hesitant to call it a great move though, we'll have to see how it stands the test of time, but I still really like it. Your opponent's strongest escape option in this mix up is to backdash, seeing as it causes SPD and DP to whiff. A friend of mine suggested that the safest way to deal with backdashing is with a cr. jab/option select sweep, just like Ryu. I haven't had a lot of time to test this, but I'll be practicing it a lot.

3) His normal DPs are hilariously bad, probably amongst the worst in the game. Their horizontal range is piss poor, forget about scooping pokes off the floor like Sagat can. I was counter hit by jump ins, I was swept out of start up; hell, I was fucking thrown out of start up. It was just a mess. EX DP is a little better. It beats a lot of normal DPs too, which is pretty good. The juggle into EX Dive deals some hefty damage.

4) I was actually have a lot of success with using Spire as an anti-air, even normal Spire! It beats jumps pretty cleanly and juggles into EX DP. You have to time it early, but it's still good.

5) His pokes are godlike. My favourite poke by far is cr. forward. It looks like it recovers faster than Ryu's cr. forward, and it's just killer in footsies. St. fierce is a close second, seeing as it's damaging and fast. St. forward has excellent range and insane speed and st. strong has excellent range and high priority. His jabs feel slower than Gief's, but they're still good. St. roundhouse comes out quickly, has disgusting range and hits hard. However it whiffs on most crouching opponents and is pure focus bait.

6) Thrust Peak (d/f + LP) is secretly good. It actually looks way faster than his other jabs; I'd go as far as to say that it's his fastest normal. It allows for an easy buffer into 720 and you can cancel it into jab DP from a good distance away. It's just annoying to have it come out during jab strings when you don't want it to. Speaking of which, EX Spire and EX DP overlap a lot, which pissed me off and cost me games.

7) To answer UltraDavid's question, a properly spaced Hawk Dive has a fantastic hitbox. It straight counter hits everything, beating a lot of anti-airs including DPs. A very important thing I found was that the closer you are to hitting your opponent in the head, the more likely it is for you to beat anything they throw out. And I mean anything. I empty jumped on my friend's Sagat and he reacted with an anti-air Tiger Destruction. I figured what the hell, I might as well Hawk Dive and it traded. I was shocked, I've never seen that Ultra lose before. But if your opponent is spaced properly, it'll lose for free. Sim's b + RH beats it clean. As such I would condition my friend to expect it every time I jumped, so I whiffed a Hawk Dive in front of him and caught his b+RH with a 720.

8) Another thing worth figuring out is exactly how low to the ground you can perform a Hawk Dive.

Sorry for the long response, I hope this is useful for anyone. I won't be able to test any more after this until the official release.

That's good stuff. Hearing dive beat/trade with DP will make me laugh when fighting my best friend's Ryu.

I thought stand strong seriously sucked compared to its ST counterpart. Why use strong when fp does more damage, has more range (going off aesthetics, i dunno the hitboxes obviously) and seems to be just as fast? Im assuming they might be able to crouch st.fp and not st.strong but its still good for trading/stuffing things.

Unfortunately his jumpins suck this time around. I think his best jumpin now is j.mk or j.hk. MK has more hit frames but hk has more horizontal range. I didnt see jab strong or fp being any decent. Splash is still awesome, just wish he had a better BnB that knocked down rather than xup splash cr.lk xx dp. Is there anything better than this off a crossup?

4) I was actually having a lot of success with using Spire as an anti-air, even normal Spire! It beats jumps pretty cleanly and juggles into EX DP. You have to time it early, but it's still good.

The juggle into EX Dive deals some hefty damage.

How consistently can you guys land AA spire into EX DP, EX Dive or does the dive not connect off the juggle? This sounds like people will learn to NOT jump at t.hawk very quickly. And if his pokes are as good as everybody is saying t.hawk should just be able to intimidate a number of characters right into the corner.

Hawk Dive has a great hitbox, but if your opponent is spaced properly and anti-air you late (as they should), then you'll probably lose out. The later you hit their DP, the better the chance you'll beat it or trade with it.

How consistently can you guys land AA spire into EX DP, EX Dive or does the dive not connect off the juggle? This sounds like people will learn to NOT jump at t.hawk very quickly. And if his pokes are as good as everybody is saying t.hawk should just be able to intimidate a number of characters right into the corner.

If I remember correctly, it's really tough to connect the dive off the juggle because AA Spire knocks your opponent up and away from you. However, I'm 99% sure I did it yesterday. In general, EX DP, EX Dive is worth the meter for the damage, wall carry and positioning it gives you afterward. The vast majority of my meter use was dedicated to EX Spire, for pressure and approach. I only ever had super once in my entire play session, but I didn't use it.

Oh, I forgot to talk about his Ultras. I used Raging Typhoon most of the time, but I gave Raging Slash a try against Gief. Its trajectory is about the same as an EX DP. If they're jumping at you, you can do the Ultra pretty late, which is good. It's also really strong against neutral jumps. I mostly used it as a tool against opponents who jump away though, but here the timing is really tight. You pretty much have to hit them before they reach the peak of their jump, so you really have to be anticipating it. Full Ultra II does 450, which is pretty bad considering I think 720 is more practical and easier to land. I didn't check the damage, but I'm pretty sure it still deals 600. You can tick into it off close short and d/f + jab easily. The best part about it is 1F activation obviously, so it punishes anything -1 on block, or unsafer. That means Viper can't use her MP Thunder Knuckle once Hawk has Ultra, and I didn't get a chance to test how unsafe Burning Kicks are now, but I think those might be punishable too.

After watching some decent Hawk players, it seems there's a divide between those who use jab SPD and fierce SPD. Obviously, the payoff with jab SPD is the cross-up game afterwards. Hawk's cross-up game looks strong, which is probably why jab SPD is pretty weak. What did you mostly use, Tofu? Did you explore some cross-up shenanigans after jab SPD?

Thanks for the response, Chinaman318. When I see Hawks use jab SPD, most of the time the opponent gets away, or Hawk does a bit of damage. It didn't look worth it considering Hawk can get into footsie range after a Fierce SPD using dive anyways. Is the difference between speed and range significant?

i guess you can EX uppercut on wakeup but its not great. EX typhoon gives you some invul too. Neither are great options.

Meaty refers to doing an attack early during an opponent's wakeup so that it hits during the latter active frames of the attack, giving you more frame advantage and letting you link into stuff you normally couldnt

im pretty sure its like gief, with jab spd being 2 frame or so (dont quote me lol) and fierce being like 4. Range is HUGE between the two. Jab typhoon has monster range.

EX typhoon has like medium typhoon range and startup, but invul frames i believe. 200 damage (down from 250 for fierce typhoon)

All gief normal SPD are 2f startup and 2f active except EX which was more startup (4) but had inv. in vanilla. I have not been able to take it to training but I would assume all startups for normal Hawk 360 are the same (guessing 2f with what I was able to do) EX maybe maybe more but EX does have some hit inv. because I was using it through block string holes. The range needs to be tested, I felt like fierce reaches for days, almost the same as jab and would not be surprised if they were the same or just little diff in range. Pure guess but I would ESTIMATE 1.5ish on fierce. I felt like I hit every fierce grab right around honda jab ochio range which is 1.5 in vanilla.

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Hmm after checking out T.Hawk's trial vids, you can cancel ex condor off of cl.mk and cl.mp I believe makes his highest damage hit confirm w/o jump-in/FA just cl.lp, cl.mp xx ex condor? Not so good in the combo department for hawk . Maybe he'll just be mid-tier in that case.

All gief normal SPD are 2f startup and 2f active except EX which was more startup (4) but had inv. in vanilla. I have not been able to take it to training but I would assume all startups for normal Hawk 360 are the same (guessing 2f with what I was able to do) EX maybe maybe more but EX does have some hit inv. because I was using it through block string holes. The range needs to be tested, I felt like fierce reaches for days, almost the same as jab and would not be surprised if they were the same or just little diff in range. Pure guess but I would ESTIMATE 1.5ish on fierce. I felt like I hit every fierce grab right around honda jab ochio range which is 1.5 in vanilla.

Fierce has good range, dont get me wrong, but the jab range is monstrous

After watching some decent Hawk players, it seems there's a divide between those who use jab SPD and fierce SPD. Obviously, the payoff with jab SPD is the cross-up game afterwards. Hawk's cross-up game looks strong, which is probably why jab SPD is pretty weak. What did you mostly use, Tofu? Did you explore some cross-up shenanigans after jab SPD?

I used fierce SPD exclusively for the exact reason you mentioned; a dive puts you close enough to continue zoning with his great normals, which is how I like to play T. Hawk. I would use jab SPD once I had Ultra (Raging Typhoon), because a smart opponent realizes that now you're trying to set it up. But I don't try to throw them, I just punish them for trying to avoid the throw. A personal favourite shenanigan of mine after jab SPD is empty jump, EX DP, EX Dive. It looks so much like a 720 attempt that they won't dare block. It will beat attempts to jump away, most reversal DPs and some back dashes, making it a good trick that deals a lot of damage.

Thanks for the response, Tofu. I'm glad my theory fighter is on the right track (there's nothing else I can do at the moment, lol). If I could make a totally random comparison to the way you are using Hawk, it would be HDR Cammy since she has a sweet spot where she pressures with her normals, specials and mix-ups. This is great since I love using Cammy in HDR/ST.